University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2014 An analysis of the Creation Museum : hermeneutics, language, and information theory. Steven Mark Watkins University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Watkins, Steven Mark, "An analysis of the Creation Museum : hermeneutics, language, and information theory." (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1536. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1536 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. 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AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION MUSEUM: HERMENEUTICS, LANGUAGE, AND INFORMATION THEORY By Steven Mark Watkins B.A., Northern Kentucky University, 1996 M.Div., The Master’s Seminary, 2000 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2014 Copyright 2014 by Steven Mark Watkins All rights reserved AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION MUSEUM: HERMENEUTICS, LANGUAGE, AND INFORMATION THEORY By Steven Mark Watkins B.A., Northern Kentucky University, 1996 M.Div., The Master’s Seminary, 2000 A Dissertation Approved on March 21, 2014 by the following Dissertation Committee: ___________________________________ Dissertation Director Mary Ann Stenger ___________________________________ Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe ___________________________________ Osborne Wiggins ___________________________________ James Bielo ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my wife Andrea Susanne Watkins without whose support this dissertation would never have happened. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my deepest gratitude and thanks to my mentor and professor, Mary Ann Stenger, for her confidence in me and her continual guidance to shape me into a better scholar. I would also like to express heartfelt thanks to my committee members at the University of Louisville, Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe and Osborne Wiggins—I cannot imagine a better, more supportive, or smarter committee anywhere. I owe a deep thanks to my outside reader, James S. Bielo, of Miami University (Ohio) for his mentorship as well as his friendship—thanks too, James, for teaching me so much about ethnography. While these four scholars have improved this dissertation vastly, I remain solely responsible for any errors or inaccuracies that this work might contain. Thanks to Tim Gombis for his loyal friendship and faith in me. I would also like to thank a list of scholars who have helped and shaped me in profound ways: David Aaron, John Alberti, Annette Allen, Pamela Beattie, Doug Hume, Denis O. Lamoureux, David E. Long, Elizabeth Patton, Pat Pranke, Mark C. Taylor, Bill and Sue Trollinger, Amy Tudor, David Vinson, Julie Marie Wade, Lindsey Walters, Mark Williams, and Elaine O. Wise. Special thanks to Renee Culver, Angie Griffin, James Leary, Lynda Mercer, Carol Stewart, Katherine Wagner, and Ben Wilt. Dr. And Mrs. Jim Ramage have supported and helped our family in so many ways that I cannot imagine completing this task without them. My parents, Ed and Judy Watkins, have been a source of inspiration in so many ways by their constant demonstration of love for me. I saved the most important iv expression of thanks for last—thank you with all my heart, Andrea, for your ceaseless love and encouragement. I hope my dissertation, in some small way, measures up to yours. v ABSTRACT AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION MUSEUM: HERMENEUTICS, LANGUAGE, AND INFORMATION THEORY Steven M. Watkins March 21, 2014 This dissertation analyzes the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky with respect to hermeneutic, linguistic, and information theories. The popularity of the CM, with an excess of 1.6 million visitors to date and future plans to build a one-hundred million dollar theme park, raises concerns among religious and non-religious people. The CM has drawn the attention of all the major news networks and has been reported on extensively in print media. The number of visitors and money raised by the CM dwarfs other museums in the area with large federal endowments. This dissertation draws the interest of popular educated audiences as well as scholars. The dissertation is divided into five main chapters. Chapter I surveys the relevant literature on creationism in the United States. Chapter II defines the use of three theoretical fields—hermeneutics, linguistics, and information theory—to analyze the operational logic of the CM. Chapter III uses aspects of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ideas of interpretive horizons to demonstrate how the CM justifies a selective and literal interpretation of Genesis 1. Chapter IV applies Norman Fairclough’s theory of Critical Language Study (CLS) to the various structures that project an authoritative form of discourse at the CM. Chapter V uses theories put forth by Mark C. Taylor to explain how vi information is processed in terms of screening—a phenomenon that seeks to reify an ancient myth. Taylor’s definition of religion as a complex adaptive network also illustrates why science is such a threat to the CM and why efforts are made to redefine science. The primary sources of evidence used include museum exhibits, literature published by the CM, videos, and ethnographic interviews. The interviews are semi- structured and allow for clarification and elaboration. The central conclusion is that the CM is a fundamentalist organization that rigorously maintains biblical inerrancy as an interpretive principle. Moreover, it employs a closed hermeneutic approach that I have identified as “concordism.” Authority is established through a discursive use of academic frames (contexts) and scripts (individual roles). The CM also displays certain features of complex adaptive networks as it reacts to a wider set of epistemological domains. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………………….…..iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………...iv ABTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………….vi INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER I REVIEW OF LITERATURE …………………………………………………………….9 CHAPTER II THEORIES PERTAINING TO AN ANALYSIS OF THE CREATION MUSEUM ……………………………………………………….32 CHAPTER III THE CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVE: THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE AND A MODERN INTERPRETIVE HORIZON ……………………………………...83 CHAPTER IV EVIL EXPLAINED: THE CAUSE AND SOLUTION TO CORRUPTION …………134 CHAPTER V SCIENCE REDEFINED: WHY A MUSEUM ………………………………………..184 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………...227 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………………...243 APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………………….273 CURRICULUM VITAE ……………………………………………………………….304 viii INTRODUCTION The central thesis for my dissertation proposal is that the Creation Museum (CM) offers a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible which purports to be a corrective to various social problems of modern society. This main hypothesis gives rise to several key premises for research: first, the CM taps into societal anxiety through the presentation of images such as natural disasters, starvation, drug abuse, and other pejorative aspects of the world. Second, these ills are then connected to human sinfulness as portrayed in a literalistic account of human transgression in the Garden of Eden. Having eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve doomed humanity to all forms of evil on earth—physical and moral. Third, the corrective for transforming the world is to be found in applying a literal interpretation of the Bible and thus recovering a more “godly” society and world. Fundamentalism formed in the early twentieth century as a reactionary movement against modernist, biblical criticism. As a North American Protestant movement, early fundamentalists were reacting to what they perceived as an attack by biblical critics on the Bible. The primary focus in early fundamentalist writing dealt predominantly with the rejection of higher biblical criticism, the divinity of Christ (including the miraculous conception, physical resurrection, and miracles), and the inerrancy and inspiration of the Old and New Testaments.1 However, the specific issues that fundamentalists oppose have varied through the years. The single theological issue which has remained constant for 1 The title of the four volume original work which deals with the specific issues mentioned above, became the term that would stand for the movement itself—The Fundamentals. R. A. Torrey and A. C. Dixon et. al. eds. The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. Vols. I and II. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1917 [Reprint 2008]). 1 fundamentalists has been a rigorous defense of biblical inerrancy. Other moral, social, scientific, and theological issues have varied. My study of fundamentalist cultures has yielded the following definition that I will use throughout this project: “Fundamentalism is a reactive religious movement that seeks to establish a pure religious order of society through born-again conversion/salvation. The inerrancy of the Old and New Testaments (not including the Apocryphal writings)